Новости за 14.03.2022

Maps of the American West have featured ever darker shades of red over the past two decades. The colors illustrate the unprecedented drought blighting the region.

Curtin researchers have recovered a freshly fallen meteorite after pinpointing its exact location on the vast Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia, with a new technique that uses a drone to collect footage of the landscape that is then scanned using artificial intelligence.

Human civilizations depend on the climate. Changes in climate affect the production of food and other resources that support our populations and economies. Paul Hooper, alumnus and adjunct associate professor of anthropology at The University of New Mexico, recently published Human Social Complexity Was Significantly Lower during Climate Cooling Events of the Past 10 Millennia in Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution. The research confirms that human civilizations... Читать дальше...

Experts from the University of Nottingham have found that the sex of a jockey doesn't influence any aspect of racehorse physiology and performance.

Mutations that lead to muscle atrophy can be repaired with the gene editor CRISPR-Cas9. A team led by ECRC researcher Helena Escobar has now introduced the tool into human muscle stem cells for the first time using mRNA, thus discovering a method suitable for therapeutic applications.

Offshore windfarm developments could avoid adding to the plight of wild birds such as the black-legged kittiwake by ensuring that the most recent data on local populations is considered when planning, reports a new study led by a University College London (UCL) and Zoological Society London (ZSL) researcher.

When the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft discovered abundant molecular oxygen bursting from comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) in 2015, it puzzled scientists. They had never seen a comet emit oxygen, let alone in such abundance. But most alarming were the deeper implications: That researchers had to account for so much oxygen, which meant reconsidering everything they thought they already knew about the chemistry of the early solar system and how it formed.

New research led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst into the life and times of a New England salt marsh fundamentally changes our understanding of how salt marshes acquire the sediment that keeps them viable. This research, published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, has wide-ranging implications for managing New England's coastline as it struggles to keep up with development, sea-level rise and other environmental impacts.

Scientists have accurately analyzed the tough barrier layer of the skin, giving the most detailed molecular map of its structure, which will help in the development of new skin products and treatments.

A new study from MBARI researchers and their collaborators is the first to document how the thawing of permafrost, submerged underwater at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, is affecting the seafloor. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on March 14, 2022.

Small spheres suspended in a liquid move enough like molecules that the physics for one can be used to mimic the physics of the other.

A newly published study led by Yale School of the Environment researchers found that a projected urban expansion of up to 1.53 million square kilometers over the next three decades threatens the survival of more than 800 species—but also that a focus on urban planning that protects habitats can mitigate the impact.

A honeybee pokes out its tongue—which is densely covered in hairs—to lap up nectar and other liquids. Now, researchers report in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces that those hairs are water repellent. That's unexpected, since most liquid-capturing organs in nature are hydrophilic, or water loving. But the hairs' hydrophobic nature makes the tongue more flexible, which is useful when foraging from sources with differing shapes. The findings could help researchers design new materials.

Experimental physicists led by Gerhard Kirchmair, together with theoretical physicists at the University of Oulu, Finland, have succeeded for the first time in controlling protected quantum states—so-called dark states—in superconducting quantum bits. The entangled states are 500 times more robust and could be used in quantum simulations. The method could also be used on other technological platforms.

Using ESA's Gaia space observatory, astronomers have explored the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy. They discovered that this galaxy has an extended stellar halo, spanning more than 17,000 light years. The finding was detailed in a paper published March 3 on the arXiv pre-print repository.

LGBT+ physicists often face harassment and other behaviors that make them leave the profession, according to a new study, which comes as physics as a discipline has attempted to grapple with equity and inclusion issues.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of scientists spend tens of billions of dollars to organize and attend conferences.

The solar system has eight planets. In 2006, astronomers reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet, the same class that contains Eris, Sedna, Quaoar, Ceres and perhaps many more solar system small bodies. These are defined approximately as bodies that orbit the sun but that are not massive enough (unlike regular planets) to gravitationally dominate their environments by clearing away material. Astronomers wonder, though, whether there might not really be a ninth planet previously undiscovered but lurking in the outer reaches of the solar system... Читать дальше...

If you wish to signal power to your colleagues, your boss, or your subordinates, you should consider reducing your use of pictures and emojis in favor of words—these are the conclusions of a new study at Tel Aviv University's Coller School of Management. The researchers find that employees who use pictures and emojis in their emails or Zoom profiles, or even company pictorial logos on t-shirts, are perceived as less powerful than those who use words.

Astronomers have imaged a beam of matter and antimatter that is 40 trillion miles long with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The record-breaking beam is powered by a pulsar, a rapidly rotating collapsed star with a strong magnetic field.

Some medical students in Canada are collaborating in a virtual class with design engineering students in Italy. Their mutual goals are to enhance their preparedness and insights regarding their respective real-world professional challenges by working together online in a scenario.

A new Cornell study, published in Nature Genetics, sheds light on a controversial debate in epigenetics—the set of molecular changes occurring on top of the genome that regulate how genes are turned on and off, but without changing a cell's DNA sequence.

Jennifer Kahn was doing archaeological work on the Polynesian island of Maupiti when she and her students were drafted into a fishing crew.

Scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the University of Liverpool, the University of Edinburgh and elsewhere have traced how diverse strains of a common pathogenic bacteria spread in Nairobi, Kenya, shedding light on how diseases might emerge and proliferate within a complex city—and how they might best be controlled. The study appears in the April edition of Nature Microbiology.

A massive winter storm is bringing gusting winds to much of the eastern U.S. this weekend and is expected to dump a foot snow in some areas of the northeast as it brings freezing temperatures to the southeast.